Brian Sutter says, “Small businesses have always lived and died by word of mouth. Even before the Internet, a business was in trouble if too many people said bad things about it. Fast-forward to today, when any customer can say almost anything about your business, and all the world can read it. One negative review can cripple a new business. Even an established company has to be careful not to rack up too much negative feedback. Turns out that online reviews are important. However, maybe you’re skeptical: Exactly how influential are customer reviews in the first place? you ask. Is anyone... [...]

Sam Edwards says, “As you’ve probably heard before, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the entire world. That means  aside from Google (which owns YouTube) no website is used more frequently each month than YouTube. In fact, the most recent statistics suggest Google attracts an estimated 1.1 billion unique monthly visitors. YouTube brings in approximately 1 billion. That’s more than Facebook, Yahoo!, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bing, and other popular sites. And this equates to big bucks. According to data curated and published by ExpandedRamblings.com, YouTube produced... [...]

Farooq Bhatti says, “In the local search sphere, one of the most important aspects of an establishment is its unique identifier, commonly known as NAP, which stands for Name, Address and Phone.   A citation is simply an online mention of your business NAP. When search engines see consistent NAP citations across your website, review sites, social media profiles, and directory listings, then this acts as a positive ranking factor. However, if search engines find inconsistencies in the citations, in the interest of caution and their own reputation, they promote businesses with accurate and... [...]

Paul Shapiro says, “I recently asked a room of experienced marketers how they thought social media marketing could assist their SEO efforts. The answers were more or less what I had expected to hear: Social media helps foster relationships, which in turn helps build links and improves rankings. Social media aids in public relations, as a distribution channel and a means of generating easy online buzz. Social sharing provides a form of social proof, giving greater credibility and trustworthiness to your content. Brands can rank for their social networking profiles and receive greater visibility... [...]

Tom Dibble says, “Although the relationship between dynamic personalisation and search engines is anything but a happy marriage, it seems to be evolving in the right direction. Do you remember those Christmas mornings as a kid, when you rushed downstairs, dizzy with excitement and nervous in anticipation of what Santa left waiting for you under the tree? You tore through the snowman covered wrapping paper, your fingernails peeling back the final layers to reveal (gasp!) the perfect gift. So perfect, in fact, that it was exactly the thing that you asked for when you wrote that letter to Santa... [...]

Jennifer Slegg says, “Local SEO has seen the biggest shake-up since Google launched their first local algorithm, Pigeon, just over a year ago. On Thursday, August 6th, people began to notice that the usual 7-packs that frequently showed up in the search results for local businesses were suddenly replaced with 3-packs in the desktop search results. It initially wasn’t too alarming, but as the hours passed it was obvious Google had changed the face of local search in their search results. By the end of that day, 3-packs had completely replaced all the 7-packs across all verticals and... [...]

Cyrus Shepard says, “Recently, Moz announced the results of our biennial Ranking Factors study. Today, we’d like to explore one of the most vital elements of the study: the Ranking Factors survey. Every two years, Moz surveys the brightest minds in SEO and search marketing with a comprehensive set of questions meant to gauge the current workings of Google’s search algorithm. This year’s panel of experts possesses a truly unique set of knowledge and perspectives. We’re thankful on behalf of the entire community for their contribution. In addition to asking the participants... [...]

Cyrus Shepard says, “We’re excited to announce the results of Moz’s biannual Search Engine Ranking Correlation Study and Expert Survey, a.k.a. Ranking Factors. Moz’s Ranking Factors study helps identify which attributes of pages and sites have the strongest association with ranking highly in Google. The study consists of two parts: a survey of professional SEOs and a large correlation study. This year, with the help of Moz’s data scientist Dr. Matt Peters, new data partners, and over 150 search marketing professionals, we were able to study more data points than in... [...]

Deborah Mitchell says, “Blogger conferences have been a great resource for me as an entrepreneur. In July, New York City was host to two huge blogger events, BlogHer and Blogger Bash, where more than 5,000 bloggers gathered to meet with brand representatives and attend sessions to hone their online skills. Sheryl Simonitis, vice president of marketing at Noodle, a destination education website, shared a few SEO tips that any entrepreneur can use. The startup allows parents and students to make better education decisions in an environment that is completely unbiased so that a child and parent... [...]

Eric Enge says, “How do the SERPs for commercial queries vary from the treatment of informational queries? Moz is about to publish its new Search Engine Ranking Factors, and was kind enough to provide me with access to their raw ranking data. Today I am going to share some of what I found. In addition, I am going to compare it against raw ranking data pulled by my company, Stone Temple Consulting (STC). What makes this so interesting is that the Moz data is based on commercial queries across 165,177 pages and the STC data is based on informational queries over 182,340 pages (for a total of... [...]